Green Diesel Canada fined for dumping waste oil

A Hamilton company has been fined $120,000 for discharging waste oil sludge into a municipal ditch, causing adverse effects to the ditch and downstream waters, the Ontario Ministry of the Environment announced. ...

January 30, 2013
by Hazmat Management

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A Hamilton company has been fined $120,000 for discharging waste oil sludge into a municipal ditch, causing adverse effects to the ditch and downstream waters, the Ontario Ministry of the Environment announced.

Green Diesel Canada Ltd. has ministry approval to transport waste cooking oil, which it processes for sale. The processing generates an oil sludge that must be properly managed and disposed of, the ministry said.

“Polluters should be aware that the ministry’s Investigations and Enforcement Branch will vigorously pursue charges when our environmental laws are broken,” said Environment Minister Jim Bradley in a January 2013 statement to media.

The ministry responded to reports of oil being dumped into a ditch on Swayze Road in Hamilton. A truck registered to the company was later found to have been in the area. Thousands of litres of an oily substance were found in the ditch, which was later cleaned up by the City of Hamilton.

The ditch flows into Sinkhole Creek, a tributary of Twenty Mile Creek that connects to Lake Ontario.

About two months later, a City of Hamilton employee noticed a tanker truck stopped at the same turnaround on Swayze Road. Upon checking the site, the employee found thousands of litres of waste oil sludge in the ditch. The tanker truck was registered to the company. The site was cleaned up again by the City of Hamilton.

The company was fined a total of $120,000, plus victim fine surcharges of $30,000 and was given 12 months to pay the fines. Also, the court issued a Restitution Order requiring the company to immediately pay the City of Hamilton $25,371 as restitution for the clean up costs of the two spills.